Effa Manley

Effa Louise Manley (March 27, 1897 – April 16, 1981) was an American sports executive, and the first woman inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. She co-owned the Newark Eagles baseball franchise in the Negro leagues with her husband Abe Manley from 1935 to 1946 and was sole owner through 1948 after his death. Throughout that time, she served as the team's business manager and fulfilled many of her husband's duties as treasurer of the Negro National League.

Manley was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she attended school. In 1916, she graduated from Penn Central High School, completing vocational training there in cooking, oral expression and sewing. She entered the hatmaking business.

Manley's racial background is not completely known. It has been written her biological parents may have been white, but she was raised by her black stepfather and white mother, leading most to assume her stepfather was her biological father and therefore to classify her as black. Daryl Russell Grigsby wrote, "...some insist she was a white woman exposed to black culture, who identified as black. Regardless of her ethnic origins, Effa Manley thought of herself as a black woman and was perceived by all who knew her as just that." Author Ted Schwarz wrote, "She was a white woman who passed as a black...She could stay in any hotel she desired."

According to the book The Most Famous Woman in Baseball by Bob Luke, Effie was born through an extramarital union between her African American seamstress mother, Bertha Ford Brooks, and Bertha's white employer, Philadelphia stockbroker John Marcus Bishop; therefore she may actually have been of mixed heritage.

In an interview she gave, she seemed to enjoy the confusion her skin color created. She related a story of when her husband, Abe Manley took her to Tiffany's in New York for an engagement ring. She picked out a huge five-carat stone. She remarked at how every salesgirl in the store was on hand to get a glimpse of this "old Negro man buying this young white girl a five-carat ring" and how she got a kick out of it. In 1977, Manley was interviewed for an oral history project which is archived at the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries.

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